I haven't used them but it would be nice to hear comments if someone has.

Ana

Ana,

Per your request I took one for the team and bought the four pack Technospike mentioned. Here is my mini review.

For my $9.99 tax free purchase there was a little Adventure of discovery.

1--- They accept Pay Pal, a good thing2--- The games DL in multiple files. Depending upon the game they are either in Zip or Rar format. Meaning you will need something like 7-Zip as the Win 7 installed extracter only unwraps zip files not rar.

3---- My 7-zip failed for the first time ever as it would not open the rar files and I had to forage for a new utility (winrar) Which did open them.

4---Winrar is not free, 7zip is so the evaluation version of winrar was used for emergency perposes only. I am now looking for something else.

5---The good news is the DL files were not the problem.

6---Black Mirror 3 arrives through one zip file 15 minute download, installed without issues and played through the intro and opening scene. I did not go any further and was able to make the first save.

7---Zezura arrived in 3 rar files about 15 minutes per file to dl. You need to extract placing each of the three files retaining the folder format as named in the same place on your pc. Winrar wants to change the folder name when extracting. don't let it do it make sure the folder name does not change from what your original dl used. The setup file is in the first folder click on it and the game installs. To complete the process the install looks for files 2-3 therefore the importance of not allowing the name change. This too ran fine through the intro and first interraction and saved the game.

Now then for the weirdness

8---Black Mirror 2 comes in 3 rar dl files again about fifteen minutes dl time per each file. Again retain the file names downloaded when unpacking and place each in same place. There is no setup file This drove me nuts trying to figure out how to install it. Well in the first folder there is a file called BlackMirror2.exe You simply click on that and the game plays it does not install to the system. The game works and saves go to MyDocuments and are easy to find in the MyDocuments root directory. The same is true for all four games.

9---GrayMatter---comes in four Rar files again about fifteen minutes each for download. Again the same weirdness as BM 2. There is no setup files and the game plays by opening the Game.exe found in the root directory of the first game file. Again, this game did not install it plays directly from the unpacked files. The game played through the opening video and to a point where I could make a save.

10---I cannot speak to customer service as I did not try them

11---These games are DRM free but some are not as they claim to allow games with CD Check and keys to connect to a game website. Those required keys are included if you buy one of those games. They do tell you if a game has those requirements. But you have to look closely at the individual game details on their site. Expand the game icon on the site to find details.

12---There are no refunds and you can redownload as needed just like GOG

13----That's as far as I got as this process took my entire evening downloading 11 files 15 minutes each then redownloading three or four files because 7-Zip Claimed they were corrupted when it was 7-zip that was corrupted. It took another half hour to find Winrar to discover the files were not corrupted. then it took another hour to figure out that two bloody games did not need to be installed and a simple Game.exe files plays the things.

14---the good news is the games work there is no DRM included and they are yours to save on the disc and play whenever.

15---the bad news is I found no place on the company's web site to explain any of this.

16----I discovered why they call them Adventure Games

17---I took one for the team starting at seven pm banging away until two AM figuring it out.

NOW YOU KNOW

They get a partial thumbs up. It appears to be a good source for DRM free games but as everything else you have to pay attention.

Hey all - as my shiny new user name suggests, my name is Chris and I work at ShinyLoot (co-founder). I really appreciate oldmariner's review. We've received some good feedback during beta via support emails but this step by step review is pretty insightful.

I have no idea why 7zip didn't work. We tested the unpacking the RARs with most 7zip and WinRAR and had no problems. We'll try to look into it.

I'm sorry to hear about the frustration with the no install games. For our knowledge, would you prefer an installer or is it a matter of us needing to label the games that don't require an installer? Several of the DRM-free versions of games simply don't require an installer so that's how we pass it on.

You are spot on for the DRM. We either do a one time CD key check or it's DRM-free. In addition to that information being present for the individual game you can also refine your search to DRM-free only games (if you were say browsing our adventure games).

We tried to explain most of this in our 'About' and 'FAQ' page, but it appears we didn't do an adequate job or make those pages visible enough.

If anyone wants to follow up or ask me a question, I'll check back periodically.

Wow! Wasn't actually expecting to get so much information back, plus a co-founder popping up!

Thanks a lot oldmariner and Chris! With the detail provided by oldmariner and feedback from Chris I think I can now safely proceed with buying the games.

DRM-free games in which I just need to download them through my browser and install and play them is exactly what I'm looking for! I guess I could say GOG spoiled me! It's good to start seeing other digital resellers with a similar approach, specially for more specific niche games.

I confess, I'm new to the whole no-installation-required games scene. I can see it's values (for instance, for people who need to hop from one house to another, if they have 2 PCs in both homes they can just take the game with them in a USB pen or something), but I'm curious on how is this possible to achieve?

I feel rather stupid now, not having payed attention to the FAQ page. There are some good information there, but perhaps you guys could still detail a bit more some aspects, like the whole no-installation-required games and no client needed to download the games aspects.

I do have some additional questions though. Chris, if you don't mind, could you shed some light into this?

1) How do the no-installation-required games differ from the installation-required ones? Do they come with any kind of pre-configuration or something?

2) How exactly does the serial key check works? I mean, what's "added" to the original game to achieve this function?

3) Still regarding the serial key check, is there a way to do this if you want to install the game in a offline PC?

4) From your FAQ, I got the impression that games could have additional patches available for download. Does this mean the version available for sale might not be the final version, at any moment? Or is this someway to help previous owners of a specific game understand they need to update their installed version?